


Coalescence

by asweetepilogue



Series: Just Your Average Road Trip [2]
Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, the first bit is angsty but I promise it's not all like that, there's a tiny bit more cursing in this than in the other one hence the higher ratings idk, this is just more rambling drabbles about their relationship, this is really a character study honestly, this is sort of a prequel to Paradise but totally not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8018056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asweetepilogue/pseuds/asweetepilogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They come together by degrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coalescence

Watching them fall in love again feels like sitting in the sun. Well, that’s not exactly true. Burning in the sun is fast, a sudden unfathomable pain that bursts across his skin with no preamble. This is slow, insidious. As if he’d accidentally swallowed a UV lamp and it was tearing him up from the inside. 

Cassidy has known from the beginning that it’s a lost cause. They’d let him in too easily; he’d crash landed (literally) in their lives, taking up space and time and they’d never asked him to go. Not his fault they were both so easy to become infatuated with. Tulip hit you over the head like a sledgehammer, like the ground from 30,000 feet, and the moment you saw her you were gone. She took no shit and gave no quarter, but she loved fiercely and desperately and honestly, and when she looked at Jesse her eyes were soft, sometimes. And Jesse, for his part, was - ha -  _ irresistible. _ He didn’t need Genesis to make you want to do what he told you to; he made you want to believe in things, even though he was as sharp and bitter as the rest of them. He made them, maybe not good, but… better. They were all better together than they ever were apart.

But this, these looks and gestures of affection and the love unfurling like the first petals of a flower in the sun, this wasn’t for him. He would burn up in that kind of light. They were made for each other, and he was dead.

 

Jesse tries to deny it, when he realizes exactly why he’s so worked up about the fact that Cassidy and Tulip slept together. 

They told him, obviously. Cassidy is actually shit at keeping secrets, especially from Jesse, especially when he’s drunk, so Tulip takes things into her own hands. “I don’t want things to get messy with all of us in one truck twenty-four seven,” she says, crossing her bare arms over her chest when she tells him. “Don’t be a bitch about it.”

And he isn’t. He tries not to be. Cassidy confronts him about it, nervous and tipsy, and he shrugs it off because Cass didn’t know, it’s fine, he and Tulip hadn’t been together for years when that happened. Water under the bridge. Plus, after the sun incident Jesse really can’t find it in him to stay mad at Cassidy for very long over much of anything. Guilt has a way of smoothing things over. Cass doesn’t believe him, but he will.

The strange thing is that it doesn’t upset him, not like he thought it might. He feels strange about it, tries not to dwell on it too much. It happened, it’s done, won’t happen again. But his gut still churns every time he thinks about it, and for the longest time he can’t figure out why.

He’s jealous. The sour taste of it is familiar on his tongue, so he knows the feeling. Jealousy. That’s reasonable. Cassidy had sex with his girlfriend, had sex with his girlfriend before he’d even managed to get his head out of his ass long enough to have a real conversation with her. It’s reasonable, but he doesn’t think that’s why his chest feels like it’s being compressed. He could be jealous of Tulip, for knowing Cass, what Cassidy was, before he did. She was able to help him recover from Jesse’s mistakes. 

So maybe he’s jealous of  _ them. _ Them as a unit, them together where he was excluded. He doesn’t want there to be moments where he can’t be there for them, with them. The three of them fit together, are meant to be a unit, a whole. He wants them even if they only want each other, but more than that, he wants -

Oh. 

 

It takes Tulip a long time to realize that she actually  _ wants  _ Cassidy.

She knows that he wants her. She’s used to that; most people want her, or they hate her, or both. Cassidy doesn’t hate her - at least, she’s pretty sure. He sticks around, but after everything she’s not sure if it’s just for Jesse, now. But he wants her, she knows, because his eyes follow her. That and he acts like an awkward schoolboy experiencing his first crush, at once more boisterous and shy than he is with Jesse. At least he was honest with Jesse. 

Him wanting her isn’t a new feeling, but she never expected to return the sentiment. She’s been after Jesse for so long, and finally she can feel that starting to settle back into place, even if she is still fucking pissed at him. But them being all on the road together is good, a kind of good she didn’t think she’d ever have again. It feels like running cons back when they were young and blind with love, except for how it’s not even close to the same. Cassidy makes things interesting, and Jesse is different now. So is she. Things change.

It’s almost perfect, like a nearly finished puzzle she can’t find the last piece to.

So it takes her a while. She loves Jesse, like a secret ember left over from a fire the burned out some time ago, held close and warm near her heart. Cassidy is new, and she never thought that, if she had Jesse, she would want anything else. She’s not really sure what sparks the realization. They’d stopped for a moment to catch their breath and stretch their legs, a smoke break mid-shift in their search for God. Parked somewhere north of the Texas state line and east of the ocean, they’d sat on the hood of the truck, passing one lit cigarette between them like a kiss. Cassidy’s shades were pushed into his hair and Jesse’s preacher’s collar was lost somewhere between Austin and Arizona, and he kept saying he’d get a new one. Maybe he would. Maybe not.

The sky was heavy with the promise of a storm, and she looked at her friends, her partners, her two past lovers, and she felt the edge of the missing puzzle piece, like something within her grasp. Like things really could all fit together just right if you knew where to put them.

So she reached out, took their hands, and turned her face up to the rain.

**Author's Note:**

> someone asked for a sequel to [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8007199) so I made this thing that isn't a sequel and hardly counts as a prequel *finger guns*


End file.
